


The Angel in the Garden

by Griselda_Gimpel



Category: Left Behind - Jerry B. Jenkins & Tim LaHaye
Genre: Angels, Existential Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Religious Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 09:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19885699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Griselda_Gimpel/pseuds/Griselda_Gimpel
Summary: Sally is a farmer living in the Millennium Kingdom. She is nearing her 100th birthday. There's an angel in her garden.





	The Angel in the Garden

**Author's Note:**

> This work is a charity commission for Anoymous for my Charity Fan Fic Drive: https://griseldagimpel.tumblr.com/post/186325795165/charity-fan-fic-drive.

Sally tended to the garden in the morning. Not that “morning” had much meaning in the Millennium Kingdom. “Night” was something that Sally could only barely remember. It hadn’t seemed important to her when she’d been a small child. She had thought that it was something that would always be there. Then the Tribulation had ended, and suddenly it was gone. Now it was always the day. Eternal, forever day.

She loved the day, of course, just like she loved Jesus. Her parents had been left behind – that’s how it had happened that she’d been born during the Tribulation – but they’d converted soon after the Rapture. Sinfully, they’d been Unitarian Universalists before that. They’d died right near the end of the Tribulation, but that was okay; they were Glorified now.

Sometimes Sally found herself wishing that could have died during the Tribulation, too, so that she would be Glorified, as well, but now days she was always quick to stop herself from thinking such thoughts. _Envy_ was one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Sally was 99 years old, although she didn’t look or feel it. To live past the big one double zero, she needed to be Right with Jesus. That meant restraining from sin – most especially the seven major ones.

The azalea bushes were where Sally started. She was very diligent to check on them. _Sloth_ , after all, was another one of the seven deadlies. The bushes were in full bloom. They were always in full bloom. Some of the plants, like the tomato plants and the pepper plants, actually did lose their flowers when they became fruit, but the non-fruiting plants just perpetually put out blooms. When Sally had been a little girl, her mother had scolded her for eating the azalea flowers, even though they were sweet and Sally had been so very hungry. Then, at the instruction of the leader of the commune, Sally’s father had belted her. _Spare the rod and spoil the child_ , the leader of the commune had quoted sagely.

Now, however, Sally plucked a flower off of the bush. She sucked the bottom and then put the whole thing in her mouth. Jesus had made it so that the azalea flowers weren’t dangerous to eat anymore. That was on Sally’s list of Reasons She Loved Jesus. With intercision, it was important not to forget.

After finishing the flower, Sally moved onto the tomato plants. The azalea bushes didn’t need trimming at the moment, and she was always careful not to eat too many of the flowers, lest she be guilty of the deadly sin of _gluttony_.

The tomato plants were another curiosity. Sally lived on what had once been one of Florida’s few mountains, but which was now just another flat part of the Millennium Kingdom. Back when she had been a little girl, during the Tribulation, her parents had desperately tried to grow tomatoes to feed the hungry believers during the famine. They’d failed at the endeavor. It had been too hot at night for the tomato fruit to set, and the flowers had fallen off without producing. Now it was always the same pleasant temperature, and while it ought to have been too warm for there to be tomatoes, they nevertheless were there. Of course, now the leaves and stems of the tomato plants were edible, too.

There was a hornworm caterpillar on the tomato plant. Sally crouched down until she was eye level with it. It was several inches long and happily munching on a leaf. Sally had seen it in the garden before.

“Hello, Caterpillar,” Sally said. Her parents said that it was good to talk to plants. Sally wasn’t really sure if that was still necessary, in this new perfect world, but it couldn’t hurt. Her parents had hated the hornworm caterpillars back in the day, since they could wreak havoc on a tomato plant in no time, but now that all plants were edible, Sally didn’t concern herself too much with them. She plucked the ripe tomatoes, brought them inside, and then turned herself to the problem of the sweet potatoes.

During the Tribulation, sweet potatoes had been the salvation of the commune she and her parents had lived in. Even before Jesus took over ruling the world, the leaves of the sweet potato plant had been edible. Sweet potato plants were also very hardy. They could grow not only in good soil but bad. They could grow in sand, just about. They grew rapidly, and like the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, one sweet potato, divided in half and buried in the ground, produced a multitude of sweet potatoes.

In this new, perfect world, the sweet potato plants were encroaching on the carrots. She had set up trellises for the sweet potato plants to grow up on, and the sweet potato plants had. Then they’d kept growing. They’d grown right out of the area she had allocated for them and right over the carrots. For all that had changed with Jesus’ arrival as king of the world, plants still needed sunlight, and the sweet potato plants ensured that the carrots got none.

Sally did not sell what she grew. She gave it away to her fellow Christians (less she become guilty of the sin of _greed_ ), and they in turn gave her what she needed. She had given away a great deal of sweet potato vine. It did no good. The community couldn’t eat it faster than it grew.

As Sally peered through the sweet potato vines, something slithered underneath, and there was a flash of blackness in the undergrowth. Sally froze. Human instinct at seeing a snake dies hard. After a moment, Sally forced herself to relax. None of the snakes were venomous anymore. None of them even ate meat anymore. She had nothing to fear.

Or did she? The adversary had taken the form of a snake in the Garden of Eden. It would not do to kill one of God’s creatures, but if the snake before her was evil incarnate, wouldn’t it be righteous to strike a blow against it? Or would violence make her guilty of the sin of _wrath_?

As Sally dithered, the snake slithered over to the passion fruit plant. Unhinging its jaw, the snake struck lightning fast at the plant, coming away with an entire passion fruit in its mouth. As Sally watched, the snake slowly swallowed the passion fruit whole, which created quite a bulge in its throat. It looked rather ridiculous. Sally decided it was probably not Lucifer in disguise.

She turned her attention back to the sweet potato plants. Struck by inspiration, she gently plucked the hornworm caterpillar from the tomato plant and placed it one of the sweet potato leaves.

“Please enjoy, Caterpillar,” she said.

There was a rustling behind her, and Sally turned to find the angel in her garden again. As she quickly looked away, guilt scrawled all over her face as she mentally cycled through the seven deadly sins, to discern if moving the caterpillar to the sweet potato plant fell under any of them. Gluttony, probably. Perhaps she was supposed to just be happy with eating sweet potato leaves and not have desired carrots. She looked nervously up at the sky, but no lightning bolt came.

The first intercision of a Natural had come just eight months prior. There’d been others struck down before that for heinous crimes – everyone knew that – but when the first person who’d been born during the Tribulation reached the age of 100 without having accepted Jesus, a bolt of lightning had come out of the sky and struck them dead.

Sally hadn’t known them.

She had known Beth. Beth had been four months older than Sally, and they’d spent decades living in the same commune in paradise. Sally had suspected that Beth wasn’t Christian – she hadn’t come to Church on Sundays – but Sally hadn’t thought her to be an Other Light or anything. Beth hadn’t ever hurt anyone to Sally’s knowledge.

But she hadn’t been a believer.

And so she’d died.

The angel didn’t say anything. He never did. Sally hadn’t told anyone about him. She lived alone – which she reasoned was a good defense against the sin of _lust_ if nothing else – and only saw people when she made deliveries or they came to her place to give her goods she needed or to help around the house or occasionally just to share their company with her. The angel was never there when anyone visited, and Sally feared that if she brought him up, she’d be bragging. She certainly didn’t want to be guilty of _pride_. After all, everyone knew that Jesus and His angels didn’t leave the Temple. There’d be no reason for one to be visiting her garden, which was so very far away from Israel.

To the extent that Sally could actually look at him, the angel looked like one right out of the Bible. The reason Sally couldn’t look at him head on, only sidewise-like, out of the corner of her eye, was that his face had to be a miniature sun or something; he was ever so bright. She thought that she could just barely make out the edges of a rainbow about his head. She could definitely see that he had two pillars of fire for feet. The foot he always kept among the spearmint did not set the plants alight, and the foot he always kept in the koi pond did not go out. In lieu of clothing, he had a cloud wrapped about him. Whenever he came to her garden, he didn’t do anything but stand there silently. It was like he was waiting for something, but what it was, she did not know.

Sally decided to take some of the sweet potato vines to market. Taking the garden shears, she began cutting the sweet potato vines and putting them in her basket. She stopped when she remembered the caterpillar, but when she looked around for it, she saw it had already inched back over to the tomato plant. Sally finished the harvest and began walking toward the market place.

“Hello, lions. Hello, okapi. Hello, komodo dragon,” Sally called out cheerfully as she headed to the market. In the old, sinful days, the location of the market had been called the Tree of Life. It hadn’t been the real Tree of Life, of course, just a blasphemous mockery that Jesus had promptly destroyed when He assumed the throne in Jerusalem. All that was left now was part of the base, which encircled the stalls and shops.

“Oh, what have you got there, hippos?” Sally asked, straying from the path in order to see what was going on. The hippos were in their watering hole half way to the market. They weren’t dangerous, of course. Jesus had seen to that. Nevertheless, they were clearly agitated about something. As Sally drew near, she realized that an injured woman lay on the other side of the watering hole.

Even in paradise, accidents happen, and when Sally circled the watering hole, she spotted the motorcycle that lay wrecked in the bushes. The woman had a compound fracture in her leg, and she was bleeding profusely. Sally immediately dropped her basket and went to the injured woman’s side.

Sally didn’t have much medical knowledge, but she was dimly aware that she needed to staunch the bleeding. She didn’t have any rope or twine on her. Then her eyes alighted on her basket of sweet potato vines.

“Hang on, Miss,” Sally said. “I’m going to braid these vines together and tie your leg.”

“Please hurry,” the injured woman said. “Oh, Satan preserve me! This hurts!”

Sally froze.

“Are you…an Other Light?”

“Yeah,” the woman said. “Name’s Eliza. Can you hurry with that vine rope? I don’t want to bleed out or something.”

Sally hesitated, basket in hand. She ought to help someone in need, right? Or did it qualify as giving aid and comfort to the enemy? If she saved someone who was sinful, did that make her sinful?

“Will you stop dithering over there?” Eliza demanded.

Sally came to a decision. “I want you to accept Jesus Christ into your heart.” It was perfect. She’d be saving Eliza’s body and soul in one fell swoop.

“What?”

“Turn away from sin,” Sally said. _Spare the rod and spoil the child._ “Or I won’t tie your leg.”

“ _Damn you_ ,” Eliza said through gritted teeth.

“Accept Jesus as your lord and savior, or I’m leaving,” Sally said firmly.

“Fuck you!” Eliza spat.

“Have a pleasant day,” Sally said. Turning smartly on her heel, she went to market, where she gave away all of the sweet potato vines, although it took some cajoling on her part. While she was there, she picked up some goods that she needed. As a result, she spent a good amount of time at the market. On her journey home, she detoured to the hippos’ watering hole to see if Eliza had changed her mind.

Eliza hadn’t.

Eliza was dead.

Sally stepped back quickly, turned around, and ran all the way back to her home. The angel was still in the garden.

**THIS IS NOT THE TIME** , the angel said. He spoke softly, and it was like seven, distant thunders overlapping with each other to form words.

“What?” Sally asked. She was so startled to hear the angel actually speak that it jarred her out of her shock at Eliza’s death.

**JOHN WAS NOT PERMITTED TO WRITE WHAT I TOLD HIM** , the angel said. **IT WAS NOT THE TIME**. If thunder could sound sad, the angel sounded sad now. **THIS IS ALSO NOT THE TIME, I SEE. GOOD-BYE.**

With that, the angel was gone. Sally went inside to her bedroom, where she cried a great deal, in big heaving sobs, for what she did not know.

The angel was not in the garden the following day. Nor was he there the day after that or the day after that. He was not there on Sunday, either, when Sally went to the church near the marketplace. She gave the hippos’ water hole a wide berth.

During the service, when the pastor asked if there was anyone who wanted to dedicate their lives to Jesus, Sally raised her hand.

“I’d like to rededicate my life,” she said timidly. It would be her sixth rededication. She’d done it once when Jesus first took the throne, once after the first Natural died, again after Beth had died, and two other times, just to be safe.

Sally went to the front of the church and knelt down. “Dear Lord Jesus,” she started. “I am a worthless, terrible, wretched sinner. I would be lost without You. Thank You for dying on the cross and shedding Your blood for me. Please let me serve You. Please guide my life. I turn it over to You. Amen.”

That night, Sally dreamed of her angel, the one who no longer visited her garden. The one, she now felt in her heart, who had once visited John in Patmos.

**WHY DID YOU NOT SAVE ELIZA?** the angel asked in her dream.

“Are you saying that I should have?” Sally wept.

**OF COURSE.**

“I did not know!”

**YOU WERE TOLD.**

“When was I told?”

**MATTHEW. CHAPTER 25. VERSES 31 THROUGH 46.**

When Sally awoke, she forgot her dream, and did not know why her face was wet with tears. She forced herself to smile, reminding herself that she lived in paradise and therefore had no reason to be anything but happy all the time. Her 100th birthday came and went. She was not struck me divine lightning, but it struck her that she’d only cleared one hurdle. Now that she was of the age of majority, it was important that her savior who ruled eternal never be disappointed in her and thus strike her down.

Sally broadened her smile and reminded herself that she loved Jesus.


End file.
